Editing FinTS

{{Short description|Online banking protocol}}
'''FinTS''' ('''Financial Transaction Services'''), formerly known as '''HBCI''' ('''Home Banking Computer Interface'''), is a bank-independent protocol for online banking, developed and used by [[Germany|German]] banks.

HBCI was originally designed by Germany's three banking "pillar" networks, namely the [[Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe]], [[German Cooperative Financial Group]], and [[Association of German Banks]]. The result of this effort was an open protocol specification, which is publicly available. The standardisation effort was necessary to replace the huge number of deprecated homemade software clients and servers (some of them still using [[Bildschirmtext|BTX]] emulation).
While IFX (Interactive Financial Exchange), [[Open Financial Exchange|OFX]] (Open Financial Exchange) and [[Secure electronic transaction|SET]] (Secure Electronic Transaction) are tailored for the North American market, HBCI is designed to meet the requirements of the European market.

The FinTS-specification is publicly available on a website run by the ZKA ([[Central Credit Committee]]).

==Features==
* Support for online-banking using [[Personal Identification Number|PIN]]/[[Transaction authentication number|TAN]] one time passwords.
* Support for online-banking with [[SWIFT]].
* [[Data Encryption Standard|DES]] and [[RSA (algorithm)|RSA]] encryption and signatures.
* Making use of [[XML]] and [[SOAP]] for data-exchange, encryption and signatures.
* Implemented on top of [[HTTP]], [[HTTPS]] and [[SMTP]] as communication layer.
* Multibanking: The software clients are designed to support accounts on multiple banking companies.
* Platform Independence: The specification allows software development for various types of clients.
* Storage of the encryption keys on an external physical device (smart card) for improved security.
* Possibility to use so called "Secoder" smart card readers to allow the user to cross check the transaction data on a secure device before signing it to uncover manipulations caused by [[malware]]. To use Secoder, the bank as well as the home banking software have to support the Secoder protocol extension of FinTS.<ref>[http://www.hbci-zka.de/dokumente/spezifikation_deutsch/fintsv3/FinTS_3.0_Security_Alternative_Sicherheitsverfahren_Rel_20130122_final_version.pdf ZKA: Spezifikation FinTS 3.0 Alternative ZKA Sicherheitsverfahren] (PDF; 1,2&nbsp;MB)</ref>

HBCI has been superseded by its successor FinTS, and as of 2011, 2000 financial institutions in Germany are supporting FinTS.

==Versions==
=== HBCI 2.2 PIN/TAN ===
'''HBCI 2.2 PIN/TAN''' (or '''HBCI+''') is an extension to HBCI that added a security method based on [[Personal Identification Number|PIN]]s and [[Transaction authentication number|TAN]]s, which had already been in use with [[bildschirmtext|BTX]] and [[web banking]].

=== FinTS 3.0 ===
For version '''3.0''', which formally introduced the PIN/TAN method, the specification was renamed to '''FinTS''', whereas the original DSA- and RSA-based security method retained the name '''HBCI'''.

=== FinTS 4.0 ===
In version '''4.0''', the basic message syntax was switched over to [[XML]]. Further, the number of roundtrips necessary was reduced, allowing asynchronous communication (e.g. via [[SMTP]]) for simple transaction dialogues.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.hbci-zka.de/ hbci-zka.de] / [http://www.fints.de/ fints.de] - Documentation and protocol information by the ZKA
* [https://www.hbci-zka.de/spec/4_1.htm on hbci-zka.de] - FinTS version 4.1 (including link to SEPA adaptions to FinTS)
* [https://www.hbci-zka.de/spec/spec_archiv.htm on hbci-zka.de] - FinTS version 4.0 (archived)
* [http://www.aquamaniac.de/aqbanking/ aquamaniac.de/aqbanking/] - AqHBCI / OpenHBCI2 free software project
* [http://www.pecuniabanking.de/ www.pecuniabanking.de] - Pecunia, Online Banking on the Mac, GPL 

[[Category:Online banking]]
[[Category:Banking technology]]
[[Category:Technical communication]]
[[Category:Financial routing standards]]
[[Category:Standards of Germany]]

{{Germany-stub}}